Meeting Gordon Ramsay, The F Word in Hollywood!

“Hi, hi, miss American pie”, ok there was no pie, but my wife and I walked the path of great adventure recently in Hollywood, Los Angeles and this is what dreams are made of.

Several months ago, I was online and came across a friend of mine from MasterChef USA asking whom wanted to go with her to attend FOX‘s new hit LIVE show, The F Word with Gordon Ramsay. I knew that I was out of my league but looked into the possibility of attending myself.

A few months ago, a couple searches brought me to a casting site. Yes, you don’t just get tickets to something like this, you have to be cast. What does that mean you ask — diners of the show are chosen for whatever the Producers feel would make for good background and sometimes what they can bring to the show.

It was a warm summer night and my little family and my parents whom were visiting were at a kids event in Gatineau when I got the nod. An e-mail confirming that I had been cast for Episode 6 and to reserve my spot! I was amazed and excited, the only thing was that it filmed in a week!

After making all of the necessary arrangements, we booked our trip that next evening!

We arrived in Hollywood the day before and stayed at the Loews Hotel Hollywood. We didn’t do too much this day because we had been up since 3AM to catch our flights from Ottawa!

After a great nights sleep, we made our way to the studio early, to ensure we would get great seats in the dining room at the show. Turned out we were first in line! Sweet!

We waited in the blistering LA heat until we were ushered through security, brought to holding and then we were brought into the dining room.

An immaculate complete high-end restaurant built inside of a sound stage – very cool!

The coolest part however was that everyone knew who I was and we were informed that the Producers chose our table, chosen us to judge the dishes and that we would critique the dishes on camera!

After a few test runs he made his way over to our table and introduced himself – yeah – no introduction needed!

We spoke for a few minutes about our connection on social media, my passion for food, that we were from Ottawa. He was very nice, polite and interested. What an amazing few minutes — meeting my culinary idol and the most famous chef in the World!

We judged Seoul Food’s fish and chips. The fish was overcooked, batter soggy and greasy and the mushy peas hard and severely undercooked. It was definitely unfortunate but made for interesting critiques on camera!

The show filmed live and we were seen on camera numerous times, the only downside was that since Marlon’s segment ran over time, our critiques got cut! The Senior Producer advised me after the show that our clips were perfect and that he was sorry they didn’t air!

We were not allowed to bring our phones on set but VIPs could, so I asked a couple of them to take our photo!

All in all, this was an experience of a lifetime and truly was a dream come true!

Special thanks to my family and friends who helped make this trip possible; Maurice & Monique Bélanger, Kimberley Wahamaa, Giselle Perrin, Tyler Desjardins and several others!

Meeting Gordon Ramsay, The F Word in Hollywood! was last modified: January 25th, 2018 by Mathieu Beausoleil